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With the ice surface at the Saddledome covered for the Calgary Roughnecks’ home-opener, the Flames skated Friday at WinSport’s Markin MacPhail Centre at Canada Olympic Park.

So, literally at the bottom of a slippery slope.

It’s gotta feel that way, too, for the Flames, who have lost six of their past seven outings and have been blanked five times during that stretch.

“You have to hate losing, and there is some frustration going on with our team,” conceded Flames captain Mark Giordano. “But, at the same time, you have to use that frustration in a good way, in a positive way.”

This team desperately needs some positives right now.

They can’t score.

The Flames have just one goal to show for their past five skates at the Saddledome. Factor in Monday’s offensive fireworks — a 4-3 victory over the Colorado Avalanche in the Mile High City — and they’ve still managed just five snipes in seven games since the Christmas break.

Suddenly, they can’t seem to keep the puck out of their own net, either.

In fact, the Flames have been shelled for 11 goals — six by the Phoenix Coyotes, five by the St. Louis Blues — over their past two tilts, their worst back-to-back setbacks of the season.

From the department of even more bad news, superstar Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins are coming to town for Saturday’s clash at the Saddledome (8 p.m., CBC, Sportsnet Fan 960).

Heading into Friday’s road date with the Edmonton Oilers, Malkin — the best second-line centre on the globe — had four points in two games since returning from a leg injury.

Crosby continues to roll, having already turned the NHL’s scoring race into a yawner.

With six, Penguins winger James Neal has celebrated more goals since Christmas than the Flames have. And that doesn’t even include stats from Friday’s meeting with the Oilers.

Funny you should mention Alberta’s other hard-luck bunch.

Three hours north on the QEII Highway, the consensus seems to be that the Oilers, who have been in rebuild mode for seven seasons and counting, have grown accustomed to losing.

That they’ve developed a losing culture.

For the Flames to avoid a similar fate, these are crucial times.

“I guess there is a danger, at some point, of that creeping in. But you’ve gotta really make sure you don’t accept that,” said Flames alternate captain Michael Cammalleri. “You’ve gotta be careful, because if you start being happy with the moral victories, that’s dangerous.”

The Flames, to a man, insist that won’t happen.

“Nobody wants to lose,” said Flames defenceman TJ Brodie. “This year, every game, guys have come out and worked hard regardless of how the game is going and what the score was. We want to continue to do that. Nobody in the room is going to give up.”

Added rearguard Ladislav Smid, who arrived in a November trade with the Oilers: “Nobody is satisfied in this locker room, but you can’t get too down on yourself. That’s not going to help anybody. We have to hold each other accountable. This situation is not alright to us. We are here to win games, and that’s what we’re going to try to do.”

You can’t ask a professional athlete in the middle of a season to look at a bigger picture than the league standings. They’re simply not wired that way.

The Flames’ fanbase will be satisfied with hard-fought losses, realizing this is the ugly part of a rebuild and knowing each setback brings a better chance of winning the 2014 NHL Draft lottery.

If the guys in the locker room start to think that way, too, then you’ve got a real problem.

“We’re not saying it’s OK to lose,” Hartley said. “The standards and expectations of this organization — starting from ownership, to management, down to the coaching staff, down to everyone — is we want to give our fans in Calgary the best possible hockey.

“We know that we’re building right now. From the outside, it’s easy to say there’s no progress. But from the inside, I can say some players have done quite well under the circumstances.